Gregory

My first and only and hardest ever crush – the kind that never really goes away – was on Gregory Jarrell.

He was just a kid. And so was I. So maybe that’s what makes it so special, what embeds it in my psyche, so that even now I feel as if this awkward, big-boned, glasses-wearing kid is a part of me. A bit of me belongs to him and vice-versa.

At the time, it was just the joy of being near him, being anywhere near him at all. It was sitting in the back of the car on the way to the park or skating rink and catching a glimpse of him as he came out of some shop or other.

There were actually only a few words spoken between us. I treasured them. I would have kept them in a little jar and taken them out to read over and over again if I could have. Gregory went to a different school, but our parents worked together, so there were occasions when life drew us together, some staff party or barbecue that included the whole family. A proper pre-Christmas in a park somewhere, where the boss dressed up as Santa and there were presents for everyone, and just about everyone got drunk.

Except, mostly, us kids.

We played instead. Made dams in the river, or tree houses, or a dangerous flying fox that lasted about twenty minutes before collapsing under the weight of Lily Devon. A lot of crying and cursing and blame-throwing that Christmas.

And Gregory: he always did his best to steer clear.

One year I saw him take a sketchbook and crawl along the branch of a spreading tree, setting himself up to sketch the river, and the kids playing, to sketch the adults in their own form of play. He was older than I was, fourteen, where I was just eleven – and he seemed a couple of years older again, just with that seriousness that he always carried around.

I don’t know what made me do this, or rather, I don’t know where I found the courage: but I crawled along that branch behind him, and wriggled around so that I was sitting next to him.

He looked at me in only surprise.

“Hi,” I said, and it felt as if I had just said the biggest thing in the universe.

“Hi.”

“I didn’t know you were arty.”

“Well, I sketch sometimes.”

“Can I see?”

“If you really want to.”

Did I? I leaned over eagerly, noting his sketch of some office lady leaned against a tree, talking to a man who could have been any age from thirty to sixty. I cautiously thumbed through some of the other sketches, seeing flowers, city streets, some birds, a sleeping cat. “There are really good.”

Gregory shrugged, “They fill in space.”

“You don’t like these gatherings,” I observed.

“Not really. They encourage people to be themselves.” And I must have looked puzzled – young and puzzled, because he added, “It’s all right. Just people tend to do things a bit too freely when they’re not in the office. They forget they have to work with these people, and they get careless about what they do.”

Like his mum.

I was young, but not stupid. It was well known that Shirley Jarrell was the life of the party, and that her bubbling enthusiasm came mostly out of a bottle. The adults all knew it and tutted quietly amongst themselves, and it found its way to us kids as gossip.

I wasn’t stupid, and I didn’t want him to think I was, but I didn’t want to say anything mean about his mum either. Luckily, she seemed to be sitting quietly and talking to a couple of the new girls. It was easy enough for me to say, “She’s having a quiet night tonight” and just leave it at that. Actually, I was proud of myself, it felt as if I had said a really adult, sophisticated thing. Gregory looked at me oddly, then picked up his pencil again to sketch.

 

Our parents weren’t just colleagues. Something was going on in the background of my life, that had turned them into actual friends. It was good, it meant that I was more likely to see Gregory.

They even came over to our place once for Christmas Day. I remember that it was wet-grey, and that they were soaked just getting from their car into our lounge. There was wine produced, and mince pies, and then everyone sitting down to play the latest board game – I don’t even remember what it was, I just remember being glad of the excuse to interact with Gregory, glad to see his eyes as they followed some piece on the board, glad to see the way he touched his glances, the curve of his shoulders as he bent over.

We pulled Christmas crackers, everyone a little tipsy – well, not us kids, only Gregory was deemed old enough for wine, and he drank it in a responsible way, slowly, looking sideways at his mother to remind her that that was how drinking was supposed to be done. I arranged it so that I could pull my cracker with Gregory. He pulled his with me, laughing at the little flower-shaped plastic ring that fell out of it.

Without thinking, I said, “Well, I think it’s kinda pretty.”

“Here,” he tossed it at me.

I caught it easily, reflexively.

“You may as well have it then.”

“Do you want my plastic green whistle?”

“I think I might pass on that one.”

 

Gregory died. It was 2014, and he was sixteen years old.

I remember that my mother took me up to my room, and sat me down on the bed before she slowly, carefully let the news unfold. I remember thinking – even as the awful truth struck home – that it was impressive of my mother to be able to see how this would affect me, surprising that she was able to see the feelings that I thought I had kept so well hidden.

And I still tried to hide them. I nodded solemnly to Mum, asked her what had happened.

“It was random,” she said, “he just walked out of the dairy and onto the road. I guess he was distracted or something, because he walked right into the path of a car. There was nothing anybody could do.”

“Is there going to be a funeral?”

“Yes. Do you want us all to go?”

I didn’t much care what Mum and Dad did, but I wanted to be there myself. I could already feel the colour and shape of Gregory fading out of the world, a small vial of soul, of lifeforce, that would never be replaced by anything quite like it again, poured away into an ocean of unmarked, raging souls. Just a world where there was no Gregory, and I would never see him walk out of a shop again, or sketch a party, or a flower. There was far too much to be said, so I just nodded at Mum, slowly, steadily: yes, I would like us to go.

 

There was glaring sunlight, on the day they buried him. We all had to hold our hands or our funeral pamphlets over our eyes to be able to see anything, and even then, we had to squint. There were beautiful words spoken at the funeral, and again as the casket was laid in that fresh, welcoming grave. I kept forgetting. I kept looking around for Gregory, then remembering where he actually was.

It was disorientating.

I felt nauseous.

But I was here for a reason, and it wasn’t anything as prosaic as a simple goodbye. I watched as they lowered the coffin into the earth, then I took my little plastic ring out of my pocket and slid it onto my finger. I knew that it wasn’t the real thing, no wedding band; no dancing, laughing reception; no life behind a picket fence with 2.4 children and a dog. Even the real thing had only ever been an impossibility, a silly dream inside a silly girl’s head, a fantasy. Even so, the one thing I knew as the coffin disappeared from my sight: I would never take this ring off.

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work